Dawn Savidge helps Christian parents think through how to balance safeguarding with encouraging intergenerational relationships in the church
You are running your first-ever Messy Church session. After months of planning, training the team, advertising the date, and talking to everyone you know about coming along to the launch, people start to arrive, and your church hall is now looking full. You are busy welcoming people and ensuring that your team has everything they need when you notice that your welcome desk team member is waving you over. You weave your way across the room to check that they are okay.
‘What’s up?’ you ask.
‘Well, we’ve had 20 families come in and register with us, which is so good. But we’ve also just had a lone person ask if they can join in. What do I do?’
What would you do?
As a Messy Church trainer, it’s a question I’m often asked. Do we admit single people without children to Messy Church? How do we balance being intentionally intergenerational whilst ensuring that whatever activities are provided in church find the balance between healthy relational connection and appropriate safeguarding procedures?
We are part of God’s chosen family—a growing body of believers joined together by our love for God, not by biology but by faith
I always start with this question: What is family? It’s an ever-changing answer that is continually developing and redefining itself. Our first instinct might be the traditional model of family—two parents and children. But we know that over the past couple of decades, the traditional model has drastically changed. We now have step-parents, solo parents, foster and adoptive parents and grandparent-led families. These family structures are based on love, care, and mutual support—not biology alone.
And with an ever-changing picture of what family comprises, how can we ensure that our children are creating appropriate relationships with other adults in order to enrich their world? Children need relationships with adults because these relationships are foundational to their emotional, social, cognitive, and physical development. The adult-child connection provides safety, guidance, behaviour modelling, and emotional regulation. But we need to ensure that those relationships are appropriate and safe—it can be a difficult balancing act.
We often hear the phrase ‘church family’. When we say yes to Christ being Lord of our lives, we are adopted into His family (Romans 8:15). Paul talks about us no longer being strangers, but belonging in God’s family with Christ as the cornerstone (Ephesians 2:19–20). That means that family, for us as Christians, looks different to the world’s definition. We are part of God’s chosen family—a growing body of believers joined together by our love for God, not by biology but by faith. I am so very grateful that I am part of a local church family.
A personal journey
For 16 years, I was a solo mum of two boys and a girl. With their biological father not on the scene, I knew that the boys needed male role models in their lives. If they don’t have them at home, boys will tend to look elsewhere. We didn’t have any male teachers in the boys’ school, so the next place they would look was TV and the movies. But are those really reflecting what we hope and pray our boys will grow up to be? I don’t think so. So where next—the streets?
You’ve probably heard the saying, ‘It takes a village to raise a child.’ I believe it takes a church to raise a family. I prayed beforehand and then called a family meeting. My children were 6, 4, and 2 at the time. I asked them to make a list of all the men in church they felt comfortable with—talking to, playing with, hanging out with. People they knew they could call and have a conversation with. The boys made a list. They chose all sorts of men—of different ages and with different roles within the church (they didn’t just pick the youth worker).
I then went to speak to those men, told them what we were doing, and asked if they wanted to be part of the journey. They all agreed. I got to know the adults that my boys (and daughter) wanted to hang out with first. This happened over coffee at church, invites to family meals at home, and intentionally building deeper relationships.
The idea was to eventually write their names and telephone numbers on a piece of paper and place it beside the house phone. Whenever any of the children felt they needed to talk to someone, they could pick up the phone and call them. And they did. But it wasn’t just phone calls the boys needed—and the men knew that.
Read more:
A parent’s guide to safeguarding
Take care of your kids! how to develop safeguarding in your church
Talking to children about safeguarding issues
Each of the men on the list joined us to be part of the boys’ journey in the early part of their lives. They took them out places, celebrated birthdays, picked berries, and helped them through difficult times—like when one of the boys stopped eating. They babysat. They poured love and prayers into each of my children, and my children became their children, grandchildren, younger brothers, and cousins. What we became was an intentional faith family. I am so very grateful to those men who poured into the boys in particular. And although we’ve moved away from that part of the world, they are still part of our journey. They still keep in contact with the boys as they continue to grow.
Cleaning up a mess?
Back to the Messy Church situation from earlier. Yes, of course, you should welcome the single person who comes along. Messy Church is an intergenerational church service, just like our Sunday services. Each church should have a safeguarding procedure and a Designated Safeguarding Officer, and all team members should have basic safeguarding training. This should be used no matter who attends our Messy Churches or family events.
It can be a balancing act between enabling intergenerational relationships and maintaining appropriate safeguarding measures. But if we start being exclusive rather than inclusive, we are preventing people from meeting with God and His family.
So—build robust safeguarding procedures. Train people well. Ensure everyone knows that safeguarding is everyone’s responsibility. But more than that, encourage a welcoming and warm space where people can connect. Create a culture of honesty and openness so that if there are concerns, people feel able to talk openly with the team. Remember, God created us for relationships (Genesis 2:18)—and not just biological ones.
Family grows when different generations support one another and build authentic relationships. Church family is not about biology; it’s about deeply rooted spiritual ties formed by our love for Jesus. The church should be a place where we can come and be family—where a child and parent have role models all around them, showing how to mother and father, love and laugh, fail and get up again, celebrate and mourn together. If we aren’t doing that as a church, then what are we doing?
